We always welcome a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers – unsurprisingly they don’t always reflect the views of this publication. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch and of course, your considered comments are welcome below. This from Phillipe Wines. Ed
There are times in life when dealing with petty officialdom when, through sheer insurmountable frustration, you just want to go into the street, scream and punch something very hard. It may not do any good but, by golly, it makes you feel better!
Like every other household on the Island we were recently sent a convoluted document, apparently jointly issued by the IW Council and Amey, informing us about the new waste collection regime effective from the beginning of May.
Sacks not bins?
The leaflet firmly informed us that after 2nd May 2016 there would no more collection of black bags and that we would have to put our rubbish in the Amey blue gull proof sacks which had been allocated to our four bedroom terraced house.
Mysteriously we were not to be issued with a black wheelie bin to match the green recyclable wheelie bin issued to us by the council some years ago.
We immediately appealed against this allocation. The weeks have passed and absolutely nothing has been heard. Neither have any gull proof bags and other equipment arrived. However, some of our neighbours in our terrace of houses have had black wheelie bins delivered.
Called and called and called
Bearing the imminent embargo date on black bag collection I have tried to telephone the Council intermittently over the past 11 working days.
Surprise, surprise! I have never managed to speak to a human being, I have just had to listen to a recorded voice telling me that “the Council were experiencing a high level of calls at the moment”.
Amey HQ inundated
I did speak to the Amey head office in Oxford. The man there could not help me and told me to call the Council. I told him that I couldn’t get through.
He said he was not surprised as Amey’s office in Oxford had been inundated with calls from frustrated Islanders who couldn’t get through either.
In person, over the phone
So today I attended the Council offices in Newport. You are not allowed to speak face-to-face with an official any longer. Thus I was directed by a man to a bank of telephones in order to talk to someone in a remote office.
I told the man that I hoped I would actually manage to get through and speak to someone after 11 days of frustration. His response was “You should do. The calls from these phones in the Council offices have priority over calls coming through on the public Council’s telephone number”.
After some 12 minutes of listening to the same recorded voice telling me that the Council were experiencing a high level of calls at the moment, I actually managed to speak to a human being!
Monotonous and dismissive spiel
It became immediately apparent that the official was stressed and fed up to the back teeth dealing with repetitive calls about the new waste collection regime. She really wasn’t interested in listening to me and went into a monotonous and dismissive spiel.
She said that we couldn’t have a black wheelie bin because of the location of our house in a raised terrace. I pointed out that we were issued with a green wheelie bin earlier which has been emptied every other week for years; that some of our neighbours have just been given black wheelie bins and that we, like our neighbours, leave our green wheelie bins at the end of the gully that runs behind our houses for easy emptying. I might just as well have spoken to a brick wall!
It’s all my own fault
The lady did say however that black bags can be left out until the end of May because of the chaos about the new collection service. I told her that this period of grace was news to me she inferred that it was my own fault because I should have read all about it in the County Press.
I told her that the purchase of the County Press was an avenue of pleasure that I had denied myself since the advent of ‘OnTheWight’ – she suddenly cut the call!
Aaaaaaaaaarh!
